Music creation software. Similar to E-Tracker in many ways, but prettier and easier to use. It was capable of handling more patterns, more instruments, and (most importantly) more effects which are applied to notes - such as tremolo and portamento.

It appeared on the market relatively late, several years after E-Tracker had gained a virtual monopoly, and never seemed to become heavily used. It also shipped without a compiler, although ProTracker 2 compiler was written by another programmer a few months later and released on Persona’s Blitz disk magazine.

Instructions:

(Note that the following is written from the perspective of the Sam, so in SimCoupe for F0-F9 read number pad keys 0-9, for SYMBOL read left-control, for CNTRL read right-control or left-alt, for EDIT read right-alt)

Glossary

Music is arranged in patterns of (up to) 64 notes. Patterns can be played in any order, the order is defined by the song list. Each note is played using a sample (actually chip music, but defines the variation of volume and pitch over time) and optionally an ornament (extra effects overlaid on the sample, which alter pitch a whole number of semitones). Each row can also contain an effect, which make various changes to the note, or other control such as song position etc.

The Sam soundchip has six channels, you can choose MODE 3 or 6 to change how many are visible at one time (in mode 6 you can see a note’s ornament or its effect but not both).

There are five bookmark positions, associated with F7, F8, F9, F4, F5 which initially are set to 0, 16, 32, 48, 63 respectively.

A frame lasts one fiftieth of a second (-0.16%)
There are 256 tone numbers in one octave

Keyboard

Key

Action

QAOP

Move the pointer

Space

select items at the pointer

Cursors left, right

move the cursor across different note values and tracks

Cursors up, down

move through notes within the pattern

EDIT

toggle edit mode

return

play note at current pattern position

CTRL + return

insert a note at the current track and pattern position, shifting later notes down

delete

clear the note at the current track and pattern position

CTRL + delete

delete the note at the current track and pattern position, shifting later notes up

CAPS

toggle displaying ornaments or effects when showing 6 channels

F7, F8, F9, F4, F5

move to bookmark

SHIFT + F7, F8, F9, F4, F5

start playing from bookmark (pattern)

SYMBOL + F7, F8, F9, F4, F5

start playing from bookmark (song)

CNTRL + F7, F8, F9, F4, F5

set bookmark to current position

F3, F6

Octave up and down

SYMBOL + cursors left, right

previous/next pattern

SHIFT + cursors left, right

previous/next song position

CNTRL + cursors left, right

previous/next sample

CNTRL + cursors up, down

previous/next ornament

CNTRL + number

set editskip

SHIFT + F0

Cut track

SHIFT + F1

Copy track

SHIFT + F2

Paste track

SYMBOL + F0

Cut pattern

SYMBOL + F1

Copy pattern

SYMBOL + F2

Paste pattern

SHIFT + SYMBOL + D

Disk operations

SHIFT + SYMBOL + S

Sample editor

SHIFT + SYMBOL + O

Ornament editor

SHIFT + SYMBOL + E

Edit menu

SHIFT + SYMBOL + T

Setup menu

SHIFT + SYMBOL + z,x,c,v,b,n

Toggle channel enable

The bottom two rows of keys act as a piano keyboard (Z plays a C, S plays a C# etc). Notes are played using the current sample, ornament, and octave. In edit mode these are placed into the pattern at the current cursor position, and the cursor moves down by ‘editskip’ rows (1 by default).

Operations

The program’s current mode is indicated by the colour of the pointer:

mode

cursor

Normal

Grey

Edit

Blue

Play

Yellow

Confirm

Pink

Data values can be increased or decreased by clicking the arrows next to the item:

label

description

POSIT

Current song position. (I and D buttons will insert or delete an entry at the current position, shifting later entries as required)

PATTERN

Pattern number associated with this position in the song list

LENGTH

Length of the song list

SAMPLE

Current sample number

LENGTH

Length of the current sample

REPEAT

Start of repeated region in sample

REPLEN

Number of repeated region in sample

ORNAMENT

Current ornament number

LENGTH

Length of the current ornament

REPEAT

Start of repeated region in ornament

REPLEN

Number of repeated region in ornament

Sample Editor

Don’t store a sample at entry 0, or there may be unexpected effects (sample ‘0’ has the special meaning of not changing the last used sample. This is important as the gaps between notes generally have 00 as their sample field).

Click in the left or right boxes to select which portion appears in the zoom window. Click in the zoom window to set the volume for each frame. Also in the zoom window, left and right cursors move the visible portion left and right, up and down cursors change the volume at the pointer.

The top row of numbers is the tone mask (0 = silence, 1 = allow the note frequency to play), the second row is the noise mask (0 = silence, 1 = allow white noise to play). Both can be set simultaneously. The mask is always the same for left and right channels.

The bottom row is the pitch of the noise (if noise is playing). 0 is the highest pitch, 1 is lower, 2 more so. 3 causes the pitch to depend on the tone frequency in use by channel 1 (if the noise is playing on channels 1, 2 or 3) or 4 (otherwise). (Any noise being played on channels 1,2 and 3 must be at the same frequency, so if two different tracks contain noise effects it is usual to put one in 1,2 or 3, and the other in 4,5 or 6 so that they don’t interfere with each other).

Tone Editor button switched to the tone editor, where the pitch for the sample can be adjusted in tone-number increments (1/256 of an octave approximately).

key

1

toggle offset positive or negative

2

increase offset by 100

w

decrease offset by 100

3

increase offset by 10

e

decrease offset by 10

4

increase offset by 1

r

decrease offset by 1

CNTRL + delete

delete an entry shifting others up

CNTRL + return

insert an entry shifting others down

Ornament Editor

Don’t store an ornament at entry 0, for similar reasons as not storing a sample at entry 0.

Ornaments adjust the pitch of a note in semitones.

key

2

increase offset by 12

w

decrease offset by 12

3

increase offset by 1

e

decrease offset by 1

Disk Operations

Don’t forget to save your work!

Click on the songname to change it, if necessary, and then click on ‘Save Module’ to save your whole file.

Edit operations

In panel 1, Click the “Track / Pattern” heading to toggle the filter between A (operation affects all notes), S (affects notes matching the current sample), O (affects notes matching the current ornament) and B (umm… dunno.)

In panel 2, items under the “Record” heading modify the behaviour of the “Record” mode which tends to be so unresponsive that I never use it anyway. Items under the “Samples” heading allow you to copy and/or move samples (“S”) but also ornaments (“O”), tracks (“T”) and patterns (“P”) from one index to another.

Setup menu

Various defaults. None of it seems to be very important.

Note Effects

The effects are based on effects available in MOD files. Only a subset of them are supported by the compiler as I never was able to work out what the others actually did.

x,y denotes a single hex digit
nn: denotes a 2-digit hex number

Unless otherwise stated:
Commands are effective only on their own channel.
Commands should be repeated on following lines for as long as they are to remain in effect.

command

description

0xy

Produce a “false chord” by cycling tone each frame between the given tonic, and notes x and y semitones higher.

1nn

Slide the current tone upwards at a rate of nn tone numbers per frame.

2nn

Slide the current tone downwards at a rate of nn tone numbers per frame.

3nn

Slide the current tone towards a given note at a rate of nn tone numbers per frame.

4xy

Perform a vibrato on the current tone with frquency x amplitude y

5xy

Perform a tremolo on the current volume with frquency x amplitude y

8xy

Setup the soundchip’s waveform function.

Bnn

End the current pattern and jump to the start of the pattern at sond position nn. Effective on all channels.

Cxy

Set instrument volume level to x on the left side, y on the right side. 0 is silent, F gives normal volume.

D00

End this pattern and jump to the beginning of the next pattern in the song table. Affects all channels. Note that the ProTracker2 editor allows commands of the type Dnn, which jumps to row nn of the next pattern. This will NOT work on the compiler.

E6x

Used to repeat sections of a pettern. Affects all channels. E60 marks the beginning of a repeated section, E6x repeats that section from beginning to end x times.

ECx

Silences the current note after x frames have elapsed. (x=0: immediate effect)

EDx

Delays the start of a new note by n frames. Otherwise (if used when not starting a note) the command will silence the channel completely until an EDx command is used with a new note.

EEx

Pauses for x+1 added beats. Affects all channels.

Fnn

Set the tempo to nn frames per beat. Effective until set otherwise.

The soundchip waveform function requires some extra explanation…

This remains set until specifically disabled (with x=y=0). It acts either on the pair of channels 2 and 3, or the pair of chanels 5 and 6.
When this command is enabled, the volume of the output at channel 3 (or 6) is modulated into a waveform with a frequency determined by channel 2 (or 5). x is set to 0 or 1, to use a 3bit or 4bit waveform respectively (also changes note by one octave). y determines the wave shape (add 1 for the right stereo to mirror the left, but that effect can cause problems for mono amplifiers)
y=6, repeated decay \\\\
y=A, sawtooth /\/\/\/\
y=E, repeated attack ////////
Sawtooth waveform plays one octave lower than repeated attack or decay.

I wouldn’t mind if you just release the protracker to the public. I believe I still should have the source code somewhere on my old disks, but I haven’t yet tried to even find the disks themselves;-)
I hardly remember I wrote protracker in a Comet assembler.

I have managed to find my old sam disks and now I have the source code for the Protracker along with an Amiga .MOD to Protracker converter (it only converts notes, effects and the module(song) structure - not the samples)

Also there are some SAM Coupe utilities, demos and games.

Also there is an unfinished Bomb Jack game source code. I think there are some sprites and backgrounds and the code for the bonus part of the game - nothing too fancy, as it was at semi-advanced stage when I stopped.

Now the question is who’d want it? I have converted the original disks to the .dsk format and have them all here, waiting…

It’s an extended dsk (i.e. a perfect image which includes the protection features of the original floppy disk) which can be read by SimCoupe version 1.0 or later (not yet quite released, but the latest CVS version works) or the Windows/PC disk tools which go with it.

No, sorry, I don’t think a manual was ever written - or at least, not in English. I do remember DL trying to persuade me to write one, but at the time the “compiler” was the bigger need so I ended up writing that.

It did come with a list of keyboard shortcuts, although I can no longer find a copy of that either. If I get time I’ll see if I can remember what they all are and write it up.

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Megademo: Stupid Pointless Cool You could have spent all that time writing a game! Oooh, interesting, I wonder how they did that? Wow, I never knew my Sam could do that! Meh, that's not as good as Lyra III...